225: Pilgrimage to Mecha

[John Funk]

Pilgrimage to Mecha

Earlier this year, Namco Bandai celebrated the 30th anniversary of the seminal mecha series Mobile Suit Gundam with a life-size statue of its hero's iconic battle armor. But the country's love affair with robots goes much further back than Gundam. John Funk sheds some light on why robots - especially those of the "giant, fighting" variety - are so popular in the Land of the Rising Sun.

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[KDR_11k]

Mechs aren't that much more mobile unless you count the thrusters and if you can stick rockets like that on a 200 ton mech you can also build a 50 ton hovertank (which would be pretty much a gun with armor, thrusters and a cockpit, saving a lot of nonsense a mech has). In battle your profile and armor matter a lot, tanks are built to be as flat as possible to offer less target area to the enemy and be easier to hide behind cover to reduce the chance of hits further. A 12 meter tall mech could just as well paint a bullseye on its torso because with that height every tank within several kilometers (MBTs have a range of up to 4km) will hit it. With a larger surface the same thickness in armor would weight a LOT more so you wouldn't be able to get the same armor as a tank has within reasonable weight limits and a mech with thin armor would really get wiped out. Finally there are the issues with maintenance, huge legs like that are prone to breakdown especially if the thing weights a lot. Anything breaks down but at least tanks don't fall over and wreck their barrel when a chain snaps. More weight generally means more maintenance, many of the German superheavy tanks and concepts in WW2 were too difficult to keep operational and often lost without even seeing any combat because they broke down and couldn't be repaired in the field.

Where mechs could be useful is in urban combat but only if you got their size down a lot, you'd probably have to make them into power armor to really help there so you can get them into buildings (unlike buildings in animes real ones don't tend to have mech-sized corridors everywhere). Of course tanks with legs (like a spider, keeping the body fairly low to the ground) can make sense in some situations too but those don't really count as mechs.

aaaaanyway....


That sounds like a quite cheerful message considering Gundam tends to include Hitler-style genocide lovers who substitute Newtypes for Aryans or Übermenschen (funny aside: Armored Trooper VOTOMS has the evil guys specifically in search of an overman who could replace the dying god, said overman promptly rejects the god's morality and substitutes his own just as Nietzsche described him).

 

[PixelKing]

Mecha=Free thruster flights

 

[Fenixius]

Very cool article. As a Gundam fan, the whole ideology about robots symbolising advancement, and movement towards the future, is very interesting. And I had no idea about any of that. I'd love to see the giant statue. Now, let's see them build an Exia somewhere...?

Which reminds me, I actually need to go build my SVMS-01O Overflag. It's been sitting in a box for too long!

 

[GundamSentinel]

Great article, good to see Gundam alive and well. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to buy more gunpla.

 

[Et3rnalLegend64]

Yes, of course we want them to be real! (I still have dibs on Tallgeese III)

I would really want to visit Japan and see it one day. It'd be amazing. I'll find a Haro somewhere while I'm at it.

 

[Timotei]

It truly goes to show just how much Mobile Suit Gundam has influenced our modern day culture.

 

[ender214]

I'd love to go there and watch RX-78-2 in all it's glory.
But I disagree, building mechs is not "Despite logic, physics and economics all pointing to the impracticality of giant humanoid fighting machines" because they are way more mobile.

Unless you look at Mech Warriors hilariusly retarded mechs.

I disagree. Mechs may be more maneuverable, but they sacrifice speed. It's also generally a better strategy to shell out several tanks than investing your entire budget on a super weapon that could quite easily be destroyed.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Hum. Interesting article. I've known of the cultural and often odd relationship to Gundam in Japan but I would have never connected that to a collect strive for advancement. Cross cultural analysis of the underpinnings of the East and West are always so fascinating. Though I can honestly say that I, like many in the west, can't stand Gundam.

 

[MissAshley]

Reading through this, I can only shake my head at the gap between what's culturally fascinating in Japan and America. American culture just seems so. . .meaningless in comparison.

 

[JusticarPhaeton]

Reading through this, I can only shake my head at the gap between what's culturally fascinating in Japan and America. American culture just seems so. . .meaningless in comparison.

Ye, it's a totally different paradigm. In North America we often criticise Japanese and Japanophiles as being overly fanatic, but I think that's only one side of the coin. From my experiences the Japanese are much more willing to commit 100% to an idea, vision, or cause, and that also means that they frequently like to search for a deeper meaning in things. (incidentally, that is also what i believe makes them such fanboys and fangirls). With america, dedication is a means to an end for yourself to enjoy a good life. That's not to say Japanese are better; they tend much more easily towards fanaticism and absolutism, such as in WWII. But yes, it's really a fascinating phenomenon to observe.

While I do think the concept of moral and political shades of grey, as well as anti-war and seeing the conflict from many perspectives was a respectable part of Gundam, I think that the series takes it too far nowadays. It's become so formulaic with many moral paragon-type characters which I find incredibly irksome. The whole series is imbued with a sense of 'half a dozen virtuous men in superpowered robot suits CAN and WILL define the shape of this morally chaotic landscape. And kick everyone else's ass because they are morally/mentally flawed and that makes them weak'.

Also, that video of Gackt is slightly disturbing. Those japanese fangirls scream like they're in orgasm and the 'seig Zeon!' chant has FAR too many nazi overtones...

 

[John Funk]

Reading through this, I can only shake my head at the gap between what's culturally fascinating in Japan and America. American culture just seems so. . .meaningless in comparison.

Ye, it's a totally different paradigm. In North America we often criticise Japanese and Japanophiles as being overly fanatic, but I think that's only one side of the coin. From my experiences the Japanese are much more willing to commit 100% to an idea, vision, or cause, and that also means that they frequently like to search for a deeper meaning in things. (incidentally, that is also what i believe makes them such fanboys and fangirls). With america, dedication is a means to an end for yourself to enjoy a good life. That's not to say Japanese are better; they tend much more easily towards fanaticism and absolutism, such as in WWII. But yes, it's really a fascinating phenomenon to observe.

While I do think the concept of moral and political shades of grey, as well as anti-war and seeing the conflict from many perspectives was a respectable part of Gundam, I think that the series takes it too far nowadays. It's become so formulaic with many moral paragon-type characters which I find incredibly irksome. The whole series is imbued with a sense of 'half a dozen virtuous men in superpowered robot suits CAN and WILL define the shape of this morally chaotic landscape. And kick everyone else's ass because they are morally/mentally flawed and that makes them weak'.

Also, that video of Gackt is slightly disturbing. Those japanese fangirls scream like they're in orgasm and the 'seig Zeon!' chant has FAR too many nazi overtones...

I'm not so sure that's the case. Gundam 00 made a big deal out of the fact that the protagonists were essentially terrorists, and that they acknowledged that.

 

[Ollie Barder]

Good piece. Few cover the cultural effect of Gundam properly these days, so it's nice to see someone do it right for a change.

 

[MNRA]

I'm not here to debate the reality of mecha...so I won't.

I'd just like to add in a QI kind of way that another reason for Japanese liking of robots can be traced thorugh their religious practices. Since basically any object can/is in possession of a kami (a spirit) that means that even a robot has feelings and soul in a much different sense from what we Westerners are used to. This argument goes over into the "electric-soul" article as well, where I think that Robo as a chrono-trigger character held a much different meaning to the Japanese audience. More in the lines of ones devotion to ones own "place in the world" and the rebellion against such. As well as the concept of allegiance, a very hot-topic in many Japanese tales and modern mangas.

 

[Falseprophet]

I love that Yoshiyuki press conference because during the Q & A [http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interview/2009-09-14/yoshiyuki-tomino-press-conference/2] he illustrates how working under constraints can actually help the creative process. Because Gundam was sponsored by toy manufacturers, they wanted to sell a lot of giant robot toys. So they set the series in space where gravity wouldn't be such an issue. They wanted to release new toys regularly, so you need to have large, prosperous industrial governments regularly researching and building new mecha. If these robots are fighting in space, there must be space colonies and assets, etc. It gave Gundam a sense of realism most mecha anime lacks.

I like some of the earlier Gundam series--the writing was good and there was some concession to realism, even if some of the characters came off as irritating. To this day I consider Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory one of the best animes of all time. When things seem really cliched and run of the mill in those early series, it's easy to forget that Gundam helped invent most of those genre conventions in the first place.

 

[John Funk]

I love that Yoshiyuki press conference because during the Q & A [http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interview/2009-09-14/yoshiyuki-tomino-press-conference/2] he illustrates how working under constraints can actually help the creative process. Because Gundam was sponsored by toy manufacturers, they wanted to sell a lot of giant robot toys. So they set the series in space where gravity wouldn't be such an issue. They wanted to release new toys regularly, so you need to have large, prosperous industrial governments regularly researching and building new mecha. If these robots are fighting in space, there must be space colonies and assets, etc. It gave Gundam a sense of realism most mecha anime lacks.

I like some of the earlier Gundam series--the writing was good and there was some concession to realism, even if some of the characters came off as irritating. To this day I consider Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory one of the best animes of all time. When things seem really cliched and run of the mill in those early series, it's easy to forget that Gundam helped invent most of those genre conventions in the first place.

0083 is okay; I heavily recommend 0080: War in the Pocket if you haven't seen it. It's easily my favorite Gundam series and IMO the best six episodes of real robot anime I've ever seen.

 

[Syntax Error]

Great article. I almost crapped myself the first time I saw that giant statue (even if it was only on a photo). Kinda like a testament to Japan's economy, isn't it?

 

[Pendragon9]

I think we should thank the giant robot for influencing so much in our lives.